like mercury
by milk ghost
Summary: In bizarre fashion, Atsushi teaches Akutagawa what love is. Color Dazai impressed. — akutagawa/atsushi
1. i

**notes:** i read somewhere that atsushi was supposed to be a girl that akutagawa falls in love with. if you thought for one _second_ that i was gonna let sleeping dogs lie, you are _wrong_. i'm a grave robber digging up the unexplored possibilities. _let there be life._

 **disclaimer:** definitely not. also, this is kinda canon-divergent a bit.

x

 _it was_ _like a time bomb set into motion_

i.

He thought that, given the name of their target, Nakajima Atsushi would be a man.

Because standing there, petrified and trembling like a weak nobody, is their target. Who is, by the way, decidedly an 18-year-old girl.

Higuchi hadn't warned him. She had gone to the Armed Detective Agency's Headquarters and hadn't bothered to say a thing. Nobody at the Port Mafia had said a damn thing.

Gender means nothing to Akutagawa, however, and he has never shown mercy. It will not begin today, either. Not with the pathetic being cowering before Rashoumon, terror flooding her eyes. She is frozen in time, a fossil encased in fear, gaze locked onto him. He heard once about the psychological human conflict of fight or flight when one is faced with a traumatic situation. He's seen it, too, sometimes. But all of the targets that he is assigned to always seem to do something else entirely. They neither fight nor run. They simply freeze at the sight of Rashoumon, and that is how they die.

He supposes that fear is a normal emotion that people experience when they witness one of their friends and co-workers being impaled. Akutagawa doesn't give a shit, though, because fear is a sign of weakness.

And he cannot stand the weak.

It would be better if they were to be purged from the world entirely. Weak people only depend upon others and therefore drag the strong down, which drags society down. The weak do not survive on their own. They feed off of others. It's despicable and even laughable. They served no purpose other than to be bottom feeders of society.

"Take the weretiger alive?" she repeats his previous words, fingertips brushing the ground. "What are you after?"

"My target has always been you and you alone, weretiger. Your fellow agents lying there just got caught in the crossfire."

Her eyes go wide, expression contorting. "This is because of me?"

 _Nononono_ , Atsushi thinks, eyes flickering to the two siblings lying unmoving in the ground.

"Indeed," Akutagawa replies. "That is your karma for being alive, weretiger. You will cause everyone around you ill, just by being alive."

Seven billion yen for a weak little twig of a girl who was nothing but a coward. She was garbage.

When she does gather whatever shreds of courage she has within her to fight, he takes her leg. Her blood is thick and red and splatters like walls like a mural. The stench of iron permeates the alleyway as she bleeds out. The walls echo with her screams, and screams, and _screams_.

Coughing, he stands there in a puddle of her disgusting blood and watches as she writhes in the grime.

 _You're nothing_. _It would be better_ _for you to just in a ditch somewhere._

 _She knows she knows she knows._

He thinks that, perhaps, hopefully, she will die and be erased from this world. Her screams of agony are beginning to get on his nerves, and he wishes that Rashoumon would swallow them whole so he could have some peace and quiet.

He grits his teeth and prepares to strike for the kill. Rashoumon was not intended to be a gentle gift. It was savage and steeped in carnage, much like himself.

But Nakajima Atsushi does not, in fact, die.

Instead she transforms into an enormous white tiger and attempts to tear him to pieces. The worst part is that she even manages to regenerate the leg he had torn from her body. Then Dazai shows up and everything is over.

Akutagawa tells him that the weretiger will be the Port Mafia's eventually, but he also makes himself a promise in that alleyway.

He's going to kill the weretiger.

And he always keeps his promises.

 **tbc.**

 **notes2:** atsushi screaming is such a mood. i feel. quality will improve. that is my sorta promise to you. blessed be the _anthology._


	2. ii

**notes:** this is quite possibly the greatest manga/anime i have ever laid eyes upon. i gush.

 **notes2:** _technically_ this didn't happen. but, i digress.

x

 _it goes off, we start again_

ii.

Atsushi takes a rebar pole to the stomach, and Akutagawa feels his breath catch for a split second.

The scream on her breath doesn't even make it out of her. Instead, her eyes flutter and she collapses, stopped dead in her tracks.

 _Goddamn._

Time around then seems to slow.

It shouldn't _matter_ , he scoffs at himself as Rashoumon takes out another insignificant Guild member. The fool of a weretiger will be fine because she possesses this absurd healing ability that keeps her from dying. Or she could just go on and die, which would in turn make his state of living just a teensy bit happier. He does loathe her and everything she stands for, after all.

But yet he can't bring himself to look _away_ , because there she is, fallen to her knees and gasping for air that will never come. Her eyes are wide and stricken with pain and she's choking on her own blood. Her fingers are spasming and her entire body is trembling. She looks so very small and fragile in that moment, then, and something sleeping deep within him stirs.

It's a tiny drop of panic from a well he thought was dry. A tiny drop of despair. He's always known despair, but this is _different_. It's despair for another, it's a show of weakness that he can not afford. He doesn't have time to pity others.

"Are you finally going to die?" he sneers at her, tone full of malice and spite. He wants her to know that he hates her—that he does not care about her existence even a little. "Begone from this world already, you useless leech."

Something sparks within her eyes then, and he is there to witness it. Atsushi grips the piece of bloody rebar and wrenches it from her body. A scream of agony rips from her lips, and her entire body gives a great and terrible shudder. Akutagawa thinks that she might very well die right then and there, the imbecile.

But she doesn't.

She never does what he wants her to.

The weretiger of the Armed Detective Agency stumbles to her feet, and though she sways a bit, her stance steadies. There is a fierceness in her eyes that wasn't there before, and her teeth are grit into a snarl. That is the thing about her—no matter how many times she's knocked down, no matter how many times she's near death, or up against an opponent thought superior to her—she always gets back up.

She's drenched in her own blood and her eyes are _hungry_.

It's at the moment that he knows the battle has been decided. She will conquer, teeth bared in a warcry never heard and gaping hollow in her stomach, and the enemy will fall. She's a damn armed detective, after all. As soon as the words _beast beneath the moonlight_ leave her lips, it'll all be over.

Akutagawa turns away from her, then, and back toward the Guild scum crawling around them. He slips back into the familiar comfort of slaughter and repeat, and tries to cram the sprout of worry for that _girl_ back into the black and dead depths of his heart.

(The only problem is, his heart is not dead and it is not at all as black as he thinks.)

He is sure to single out the man who'd put a shard of wrought metal through her, and he does not give him an expedient death.

tbc


End file.
